Aging and the Arts

By HLTD51 student Teaformeplease

Western society regularly views becoming old as a disease or an illness that needs to be prevented or cured. This tendency  is seen everywhere, especially with advertisements that promote “cosmeceutical” products like “anti aging” creams that magically turn “old” wrinkly faces into young smooth ones, or through exercising and dieting that can keep you forever fit and young.

We try so hard to seek eternal youth and so what happens as a consequence is our ignorance towards the reality of aging, and it’s more troubling aspects such as physical and emotional vulnerabilities, dependency, passivity and mortality. As age critic Lynne Segal writes in her manifesto, “The Coming of Age Studies, “We rarely address grief, and pain. We always have a “Happiness Industry”. We refuse to address the inevitably sorrows and tragic aspects of one’s life.”

James Applewhite‘s poem, “Aging/Healing” (2004) attempts to do this difficult work—the work of viewing aging as a natural life process—by bringing readers into an uncomfortably close relationship with the troubling aspects associated with becoming old. In doing so, “Aging/Healing” attempts to seek an answer on how to live a successful life. 

The poem’s first two stanzas begin by gesturing to the most dreaded aspect of aging—disease.

Examinations expose your skin, the scenes
under their healing machines

just more inscriptions on the brain.
They manage your pain through a vein,
you go under and don’t remember.
You feel interest, partisan empathy,
cheering the doctor in his discovery,
spectator, on the side of your own body.

Here, the speaker describes the experiences of going into surgery for some kind of disease, as doctors administer some sort of pain management; upon waking, the speaker “cheer[s]” the discovery and removal of the physical manifestations of disease. By bringing the “spectator” (both speaker and reader) into this scene, the poem acknowledges the physical consequences of aging as connected to an increased susceptibility to illness–but also a  dependency upon others, like a doctor: a collaborative yet strangely “partisan” process. 

 Applewhite also explores the emotional toll of accepting old age, and how it can make people long for their youth. This is seen in the third and fourth stanzas where the narrator makes comments about his age, as if he detests what growing old has done to his body, the narrator says,

Sure enough, we won. Now I’m better.
But better than what? Not than years ago,
when I’d chainsaw trees, shrub and mow.

Here the narrator self reflects on the time when he was young and that he is not “better”, because he is not who he was years ago when he was able to do what young people did—lift heavy things, and do vigorous activity. Here, the abilities associated with youth are equated with health; to be young and able to do certain physical activities is what the narrator views as a symbol of wellbeing and so the narrator’s reflection on this leads to us to a process of acceptance.

Now the rest of the poem is where I think things gets really interesting, because the narrator begins to accept the process of aging–so the poem moves away from viewing aging as a negative aspect of life, to a realistic and inevitable one. Before, the speaker viewed aging as being unable to do activities he was able to, but as the poem goes on aging becomes acceptable as a natural process of life.

I’m pleased to be in the world, among
others heartier, taking part in the song
that all beings sing together—not the one
wielding shovel or saw anymore, but upon
the same ground.

Here, the narrator is self aware that aging is a natural process, with death being the destination for all. The narrator admits the side effects of aging (“I’m sleepier earlier, but so what?”). Not only does he realize that he doesn’t having the same amount of energy like he used to, but by asking “So what?” readers encounter a phrase that forces us to think beyond aging as not just full of physical side effects, but as an inevitable process.

The following stanza expands on the idea of acceptance Here, the narrator goes through every aspect of life and aging as a dynamic process as he realizes, “the things I dread [aging], can’t spoil [stop] the brilliant decline of afternoon [time].”; in other words, that everything– the pain, the agony, the memories, and one’s physique — all vanish with time:

The old have their place in the world,
even if finally it’s a hole. The memory
of pain fades, the fright passes, the agony
ends, eventually. This is to say
that the things I dread can’t spoil
this brilliant decline of afternoon [. . .]

That old dream. Image of self, the perfection
of a look or an act, lonely exaltation,
once, of power in the body. These different times.

At the end–of the poem, and of life itself, it seems–Applewhite attempts to posit an answer on how to live a successful life, or how to live into older age with a continued sense of importance and usefulness. The narrator believes that life isn’t just finished with the decline and death of a person, but that life is an interconnected process with deaths that don’t define “the end”, as he says, “I live among others, for others…”. The purpose of life is not seen as an independent process, but as one that is connected to other people’s lives, as you influence them and as you are influenced by them:

I live among others, for others, [. . .]

they sit for me to read:
the grandsons, the students, fellow professors of breath
for whom delight is what we discover, together.
I don’t see why it can’t go on forever.

“Aging/Healing” suggests that the purpose of life is how we pass on knowledge, influence others intergenerationally, and how we can continually learn from them as they too pass knowledge onto you. In other words, your life is not done when you are no longer physically around, because what you pass on–all your lessons, all your stories, and all your inspiration– will continue to live in others. Just like the physical aspect of this poem itself, as it consists of stanzas that ignore the conventional use of periods and commas– life is but an amalgamation of endings and beginnings.